Washington
Judge: Trump can’t strip Foreign Service workers of their collective bargaining rights
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge agreed Wednesday to temporarily block the Trump administration from stripping Foreign Service employees of their collective bargaining rights.
U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman granted a federal labor union’s request for a preliminary injunction that, while its lawsuit against the government is pending, stops the Republican administration from implementing a key portion of an executive order signed by President Donald Trump.
The American Foreign Service Association, which represents more than 18,000 members of the Foreign Service, sued to stop the administration over the March 27 executive order.
The union said Trump’s order “upended decades of stable labor-management relations in the Foreign Service,” removing all members at the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development from coverage of a law that gives them the right to organize and bargain collectively.
In his opinion, Friedman said “Congress could not have been clearer in passing the Statute that it intended for the protections of the Statute to extend broadly to the covered departments and agencies in the foreign service.”
Government lawyers said Trump determined that “agencies with a primary national security focus are being hamstrung by restrictive terms of collective bargaining agreements that frustrate his ability to safeguard the interests of the American people.”
“The democratically-elected President’s determination regarding the public interest in that sphere is entitled to deference,” they wrote.
Plaintiffs’ attorneys claim Trump issued the executive order to retaliate against labor unions and not to achieve any national security goals.
“Foreign Service employees have lost the ability to bargain collectively at a time when it matters the most, as the Administration continues to make significant, ongoing changes to employees’ working conditions and employment,” union attorneys wrote.
Last month, in a separate case, the same judge temporarily blocked the administration from canceling collective bargaining rights for hundreds of thousands of federal employees. Friedman ruled that a key part of Trump’s executive order could not be enforced at roughly three dozen agencies and departments where employees are represented by the National Treasury Employees Union.
The government appealed his decision.
Democratic President Bill Clinton nominated Friedman to the bench in 1994.
South Carolina
Supreme Court decides heartbeat definition allows for ban of six-week abortion
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — The South Carolina Supreme Court ruled Wednesday the state can keep banning abortions around six weeks after conception by agreeing with the earliest interpretation offered of when a heartbeat starts.
The justices unanimously ruled that while the medical language in the 2023 law was vague, supporters and opponents of the law all seemed to think it banned abortions after six weeks until Planned Parenthood lost its challenge to the entire law two years ago.
The law says abortions cannot be performed after an ultrasound can detect “cardiac activity, or the steady and repetitive rhythmic contraction of the fetal heart, within the gestational sac.”
The state argued that is the moment when an ultrasound detects cardiac activity. Planned Parenthood said the words after the “or” mean the ban should only start after the major parts of the heart come together and “repetitive rhythmic contraction” begins, which is often around nine weeks.
The justices acknowledged the medical imprecision of South Carolina’s heartbeat provision, which is similar to language in the laws in several other states. But they said this drove them to study the intent of the General Assembly, which left no doubt that lawmakers on both sides of the issue saw it as a six-week ban.
“We could find not one instance during the entire 2023 legislative session in which anyone connected in any way to the General Assembly framed the Act as banning abortion after approximately nine weeks,” Associate Justice John Few wrote in the court’s opinion.
The justices said opponents of the law used six weeks when proposing amendments on when child support payments should start that were voted down.
And the Supreme Court pointed out Planned Parenthood used the phrase “six-week ban” more than 300 times in previous filings, as South Carolina’s 2021 ban at cardiac activity was overturned in a 3-2 decision in 2023 and then reinstated months later after the General Assembly tweaked the law and the court’s only woman who overturned the ban had to retire because of her age.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and ended a nationwide right to abortion in 2022, most Republican-controlled states have begun enforcing new bans or restrictions while most Democrat-dominated ones have sought to protect abortion access.
Currently, 12 states enforce bans on abortion at all stages of pregnancy, with limited exceptions. South Carolina and three others prohibit abortions at or about six weeks into pregnancy -- often before women realize they’re pregnant.
The fight over South Carolina’s abortion law is not over. A federal judge this month allowed to continue a lawsuit by five OB-GYN doctors who said they can’t properly treat patients because they fear they could be charged with crimes due to the vague definitions of heartbeat and the exceptions allowing abortions only when a fatal fetal anomaly exists or a woman’s life is at risk.
South Carolina’s law also allows abortions for up to 12 weeks after conception if the pregnancy was caused by rape or incest.
Republican South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster said the state will continue to fight as long as the law is challenged.
“Today’s ruling is another clear and decisive victory that will ensure the lives of countless unborn children remain protected and that South Carolina continues to lead the charge in defending the sanctity of life,” he said in a statement.
Planned Parenthood also vowed to keep challenging the ban, saying it harms women and damages the state’s healthcare system.
“Justice did not prevail today, and the people of South Carolina are paying the price. People have been forced to carry pregnancies against their will, suffered life-threatening infections, and died as a direct result of this abortion ban,” the organization’s statement said.
New York
Ex-FDNY chief gets 3 years in prison for taking bribes to fast-track safety inspections
NEW YORK (AP) — A former New York City Fire Department chief was sentenced to three years in prison Wednesday for accepting tens of thousands of dollars in bribes to fast-track fire safety inspections at restaurants, hotels and other city businesses.
Anthony Saccavino, 61, pleaded guilty in January to running the scheme while heading the department’s Bureau of Fire Prevention, which regulates the installation of fire safety and suppression systems in New York City.
With the help of another chief, Brian Cordasco, Saccavino solicited and received $190,000 in bribe payments between 2021 and 2023, prosecutors said.
“Chief Saccavino led a pay-to-play bribery scheme that would offend the sensibilities of every hard-working New Yorker,” Manhattan U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said in a statement.
A retired firefighter who ran an unsanctioned “expediting” business acted as the intermediary for the more than 30 projects that benefited from the accelerated reviews.
Saccavino was arrested in September alongside Cordasco, who also pleaded guilty and was sentenced in March to 20 months in prison.
Their arrests came days before the criminal indictment of Mayor Eric Adams on bribery charges that included allegations he sped up fire safety inspections at the Turkish consulate in exchange for illegal contributions. Adams has denied wrongdoing.
The case against the mayor, which was later ordered dropped by the Trump administration, was unrelated to the fire chiefs’ bribery scandal.
On top of his prison term, Saccavino was ordered to pay a $150,000 fine and to return $57,000 that he personally pocketed in bribes, prosecutors said.
Massachusetts
Harvard researcher charged with trying to smuggle frog embryos into United States
BOSTON (AP) — A Russian-born scientist and Harvard University researcher, who was already facing deportation back to Russia, was charged Wednesday with trying to smuggle frog embryos into the country.
Kseniia Petrova, 30, was sent to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Louisiana after her February arrest. She continues to await a judge’s decision on whether she will be deported to Russia, where she fears she will be imprisoned or worse. A hearing on her case was held Wednesday in Vermont.
But in the case’s latest twist, federal prosecutors charged her with one count of smuggling goods into the United States. It says she was taken into custody Wednesday. If convicted, Petrova faces a sentence of up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.
A lawyer for Petrova could not be reached for comment. It is unclear if she is being moved from the ICE facility.
Petrova had been vacationing in France, where she stopped at a lab specializing in splicing superfine sections of frog embryos and obtained a package of samples to be used for research.
As she passed through a U.S. Customs and Border Protection checkpoint in Boston Logan International Airport, Petrova was questioned about the samples. Petrova told The Associated Press in an interview last month that she didn’t realize the items needed to be declared and was not trying to sneak in anything. After an interrogation, Petrova was told her visa was being cancelled.
“The truth is on my side,” said Petrova, who spoke with the AP in a video call from the Louisiana ICE detention center in Monroe.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement on the social platform X that Petrova was detained after “lying to federal officers about carrying substances into the country.” They allege messages on her phone “revealed she planned to smuggle the materials through customs without declaring them.”
Federal prosecutors said Petrova was stopped by Customs and Border Protection agents after a law enforcement canine alerted them to her checked duffle bag. Upon inspection, the frog embryos were discovered in a foam box. She initially denied carrying any biological material in her checked baggage, prosecutors said, but later acknowledged it.
Petrova’s boss and mentor, Leon Peshkin, said in an interview last month that the samples were not in any way dangerous or biohazardous.
“I don’t think she did anything wrong,” Peshkin told the AP. “But even if she did, at most she should have gotten a warning or maybe a fine of up to $500.”
Harvard said in a statement that the university “continues to monitor the situation.”
Petrova told the AP that she left her country to avoid conflict or possible political repression. She fled after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, marking the start of a bloody three-year war.
“If I go back, I am afraid I will be imprisoned because of my political position and my position against war,” Petrova said.
Petrova’s case is being closely watched by the scientific community, with some fearing it could impact recruiting and retaining foreign scientists at U.S. universities.
“I think that there is a wrong perception that foreign scientists are somehow privileged to be in the United States. I feel it’s the opposite,” Peshkin said. “Foreign scientists come here with gifts ... they are highly skilled experts who are in demand. They enrich the American scientific community.”
Judge: Trump can’t strip Foreign Service workers of their collective bargaining rights
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge agreed Wednesday to temporarily block the Trump administration from stripping Foreign Service employees of their collective bargaining rights.
U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman granted a federal labor union’s request for a preliminary injunction that, while its lawsuit against the government is pending, stops the Republican administration from implementing a key portion of an executive order signed by President Donald Trump.
The American Foreign Service Association, which represents more than 18,000 members of the Foreign Service, sued to stop the administration over the March 27 executive order.
The union said Trump’s order “upended decades of stable labor-management relations in the Foreign Service,” removing all members at the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development from coverage of a law that gives them the right to organize and bargain collectively.
In his opinion, Friedman said “Congress could not have been clearer in passing the Statute that it intended for the protections of the Statute to extend broadly to the covered departments and agencies in the foreign service.”
Government lawyers said Trump determined that “agencies with a primary national security focus are being hamstrung by restrictive terms of collective bargaining agreements that frustrate his ability to safeguard the interests of the American people.”
“The democratically-elected President’s determination regarding the public interest in that sphere is entitled to deference,” they wrote.
Plaintiffs’ attorneys claim Trump issued the executive order to retaliate against labor unions and not to achieve any national security goals.
“Foreign Service employees have lost the ability to bargain collectively at a time when it matters the most, as the Administration continues to make significant, ongoing changes to employees’ working conditions and employment,” union attorneys wrote.
Last month, in a separate case, the same judge temporarily blocked the administration from canceling collective bargaining rights for hundreds of thousands of federal employees. Friedman ruled that a key part of Trump’s executive order could not be enforced at roughly three dozen agencies and departments where employees are represented by the National Treasury Employees Union.
The government appealed his decision.
Democratic President Bill Clinton nominated Friedman to the bench in 1994.
South Carolina
Supreme Court decides heartbeat definition allows for ban of six-week abortion
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — The South Carolina Supreme Court ruled Wednesday the state can keep banning abortions around six weeks after conception by agreeing with the earliest interpretation offered of when a heartbeat starts.
The justices unanimously ruled that while the medical language in the 2023 law was vague, supporters and opponents of the law all seemed to think it banned abortions after six weeks until Planned Parenthood lost its challenge to the entire law two years ago.
The law says abortions cannot be performed after an ultrasound can detect “cardiac activity, or the steady and repetitive rhythmic contraction of the fetal heart, within the gestational sac.”
The state argued that is the moment when an ultrasound detects cardiac activity. Planned Parenthood said the words after the “or” mean the ban should only start after the major parts of the heart come together and “repetitive rhythmic contraction” begins, which is often around nine weeks.
The justices acknowledged the medical imprecision of South Carolina’s heartbeat provision, which is similar to language in the laws in several other states. But they said this drove them to study the intent of the General Assembly, which left no doubt that lawmakers on both sides of the issue saw it as a six-week ban.
“We could find not one instance during the entire 2023 legislative session in which anyone connected in any way to the General Assembly framed the Act as banning abortion after approximately nine weeks,” Associate Justice John Few wrote in the court’s opinion.
The justices said opponents of the law used six weeks when proposing amendments on when child support payments should start that were voted down.
And the Supreme Court pointed out Planned Parenthood used the phrase “six-week ban” more than 300 times in previous filings, as South Carolina’s 2021 ban at cardiac activity was overturned in a 3-2 decision in 2023 and then reinstated months later after the General Assembly tweaked the law and the court’s only woman who overturned the ban had to retire because of her age.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and ended a nationwide right to abortion in 2022, most Republican-controlled states have begun enforcing new bans or restrictions while most Democrat-dominated ones have sought to protect abortion access.
Currently, 12 states enforce bans on abortion at all stages of pregnancy, with limited exceptions. South Carolina and three others prohibit abortions at or about six weeks into pregnancy -- often before women realize they’re pregnant.
The fight over South Carolina’s abortion law is not over. A federal judge this month allowed to continue a lawsuit by five OB-GYN doctors who said they can’t properly treat patients because they fear they could be charged with crimes due to the vague definitions of heartbeat and the exceptions allowing abortions only when a fatal fetal anomaly exists or a woman’s life is at risk.
South Carolina’s law also allows abortions for up to 12 weeks after conception if the pregnancy was caused by rape or incest.
Republican South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster said the state will continue to fight as long as the law is challenged.
“Today’s ruling is another clear and decisive victory that will ensure the lives of countless unborn children remain protected and that South Carolina continues to lead the charge in defending the sanctity of life,” he said in a statement.
Planned Parenthood also vowed to keep challenging the ban, saying it harms women and damages the state’s healthcare system.
“Justice did not prevail today, and the people of South Carolina are paying the price. People have been forced to carry pregnancies against their will, suffered life-threatening infections, and died as a direct result of this abortion ban,” the organization’s statement said.
New York
Ex-FDNY chief gets 3 years in prison for taking bribes to fast-track safety inspections
NEW YORK (AP) — A former New York City Fire Department chief was sentenced to three years in prison Wednesday for accepting tens of thousands of dollars in bribes to fast-track fire safety inspections at restaurants, hotels and other city businesses.
Anthony Saccavino, 61, pleaded guilty in January to running the scheme while heading the department’s Bureau of Fire Prevention, which regulates the installation of fire safety and suppression systems in New York City.
With the help of another chief, Brian Cordasco, Saccavino solicited and received $190,000 in bribe payments between 2021 and 2023, prosecutors said.
“Chief Saccavino led a pay-to-play bribery scheme that would offend the sensibilities of every hard-working New Yorker,” Manhattan U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said in a statement.
A retired firefighter who ran an unsanctioned “expediting” business acted as the intermediary for the more than 30 projects that benefited from the accelerated reviews.
Saccavino was arrested in September alongside Cordasco, who also pleaded guilty and was sentenced in March to 20 months in prison.
Their arrests came days before the criminal indictment of Mayor Eric Adams on bribery charges that included allegations he sped up fire safety inspections at the Turkish consulate in exchange for illegal contributions. Adams has denied wrongdoing.
The case against the mayor, which was later ordered dropped by the Trump administration, was unrelated to the fire chiefs’ bribery scandal.
On top of his prison term, Saccavino was ordered to pay a $150,000 fine and to return $57,000 that he personally pocketed in bribes, prosecutors said.
Massachusetts
Harvard researcher charged with trying to smuggle frog embryos into United States
BOSTON (AP) — A Russian-born scientist and Harvard University researcher, who was already facing deportation back to Russia, was charged Wednesday with trying to smuggle frog embryos into the country.
Kseniia Petrova, 30, was sent to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Louisiana after her February arrest. She continues to await a judge’s decision on whether she will be deported to Russia, where she fears she will be imprisoned or worse. A hearing on her case was held Wednesday in Vermont.
But in the case’s latest twist, federal prosecutors charged her with one count of smuggling goods into the United States. It says she was taken into custody Wednesday. If convicted, Petrova faces a sentence of up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.
A lawyer for Petrova could not be reached for comment. It is unclear if she is being moved from the ICE facility.
Petrova had been vacationing in France, where she stopped at a lab specializing in splicing superfine sections of frog embryos and obtained a package of samples to be used for research.
As she passed through a U.S. Customs and Border Protection checkpoint in Boston Logan International Airport, Petrova was questioned about the samples. Petrova told The Associated Press in an interview last month that she didn’t realize the items needed to be declared and was not trying to sneak in anything. After an interrogation, Petrova was told her visa was being cancelled.
“The truth is on my side,” said Petrova, who spoke with the AP in a video call from the Louisiana ICE detention center in Monroe.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement on the social platform X that Petrova was detained after “lying to federal officers about carrying substances into the country.” They allege messages on her phone “revealed she planned to smuggle the materials through customs without declaring them.”
Federal prosecutors said Petrova was stopped by Customs and Border Protection agents after a law enforcement canine alerted them to her checked duffle bag. Upon inspection, the frog embryos were discovered in a foam box. She initially denied carrying any biological material in her checked baggage, prosecutors said, but later acknowledged it.
Petrova’s boss and mentor, Leon Peshkin, said in an interview last month that the samples were not in any way dangerous or biohazardous.
“I don’t think she did anything wrong,” Peshkin told the AP. “But even if she did, at most she should have gotten a warning or maybe a fine of up to $500.”
Harvard said in a statement that the university “continues to monitor the situation.”
Petrova told the AP that she left her country to avoid conflict or possible political repression. She fled after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, marking the start of a bloody three-year war.
“If I go back, I am afraid I will be imprisoned because of my political position and my position against war,” Petrova said.
Petrova’s case is being closely watched by the scientific community, with some fearing it could impact recruiting and retaining foreign scientists at U.S. universities.
“I think that there is a wrong perception that foreign scientists are somehow privileged to be in the United States. I feel it’s the opposite,” Peshkin said. “Foreign scientists come here with gifts ... they are highly skilled experts who are in demand. They enrich the American scientific community.”
